Founding Engineer

Responsibilities Work directly with founders across engineering, product, and operations to define priorities and execution strategy. Own and scale core backend infrastructure powering Theta's data platform; manage cloud compute, optimize workers, and solve hard systems problems daily. Tackle research-grade engineering challenges at the intersection of AI, agents, and data pipelines, implementing new model harnesses and staying ahead of the frontier. Build and improve internal tooling and workflows that maintain high-fidelity, high-quality data output at scale. Work directly alongside founders to define technical priorities and drive execution with minimal oversight. Bring engineering maturity and hard-earned instincts to a small, fast-moving team, raising the bar for how problems are scoped and solved. Understand domain workflows and translate them into agent training environment tasks. Requirements 3-7 years of experience at a deeply technical company (e.g., AI/ML-focused team at a top-tier startup or FAANG) where you've been solving infrastructure problems most engineers haven't encountered. Strong backend infrastructure background: cloud compute management, distributed systems, worker optimization, and scaling platforms under real load. Hands‑on experience with AI/ML systems, whether on an agent, post‑training, or ML infra team or building ML‑adjacent infrastructure (not recommendation systems, ad ranking, or traditional ML pipelines). Genuine, innate interest in the AI tooling landscape: you follow new model releases, harnesses, and frameworks closely and move fast to apply them. High autonomy and scrappiness: You thrive in ambiguous, fast‑moving environments and don't need hand‑holding to ship. #J-18808-Ljbffr